Job - Research Associate, ‘Unsettling Scientific Stories'

‘Unsettling Scientific Stories: expertise, narrative and future histories’ is an AHRC funded project which investigates how the history of the future was written over the course of the 20^th century. It examines the different ways in which the sciences were used by novelists, commentators, politicians and academics to envision the future history of western society, and how the public both informed and responded to these conceptualisations.

Working under the supervision of the project’s PI, you will take a lead role in developing one of the project’s key outcomes: an interactive imaginative participant ethnography, housed within the project’s website. This innovative methodology combines data generation with public engagement, building on the popular appetite for speculative fiction to encourage a two-way dialogue between the project and wider expert and lay publics. Additionally, you will cooperate closely with other project members (based in Newcastle and Aberystwyth) in order to develop the other project components, including other elements of the project website, be lead author on at least one peer-reviewed article arising out of the project’s work and assist in the organisation of conferences and meetings linked to the project.

You will need a PhD in the history/sociology of science, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience and you will need to find reading (or writing) SF an absorbing, fascinating and exciting pastime.

The salary will be £30,434 per year and the position is available for a period of up to 30 months.

Closing date: Midnight on Monday 23 November 2015

Further details here.

Michaelmas Term 2015

There will be no meetings of the Science and Literature Reading Group this term, but we hope to return in Lent Term 2016. More information will be posted here once available.

Science and Literature Commission / DHST - Fall 2015 Newsletter

a) 25th International Conference of History of Science and Technology , Division of History of Science and Technology, International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Rio, Brazil 2017.

The Commission of Science and Literature was established in 2013 in Manchester during the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Therefore our participation in one or more symposia in the 25th International Congress, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 23 to 29 July 2017, (http://www.ichst2017.sbhc.org.br ) will be the first "appearance" of our Commission in such a great event for the community of the historians of science and technology.
We welcome proposals for thematic symposia and/or stand-alone papers to incorporate in our symposia until 31st March 2016. Each symposium has to secure at least three presenters. Please have in mind that according to the policy of the Congress only one paper can be given by each individual participating in the Conference.

b) Workshop on "Science Fiction. Jules Verne and 19th century science", Athens 17-18 December 2015
In connection with several activities concerning the celebration of 2015 as international year of Light Coscilit organizes a two-days' workshop on "Science Fiction. Jules Verne and 19th century science".
We welcome papers for oral presentations of about 20-30 minutes on subjects (indicatively) related with Jules Verne, his scientific knowledge, the scientific innovations of his time that inspired him, other futuristic novels of that time which had a scientific background, and the influence of Jules Verne for the development of science and technology. Papers which will discuss other subjects and dimensions of science fiction are also welcome.

Deadline for the submission of the papers: 30 October 2015

Registration fees: 80 Euros
Registration fees for young scholars, postgraduate and graduate students: 30 Euros

c) Special issue of Almagest on science fiction.
We have arranged that the next issue of Almagest (published by Brepols) will be a special issue on science fiction in the framework of science and literature studies.
Guest editors will be John Holmes, Valerie Stienon, George N. Vlahakis and Kostas Tampakis.
We welcome papers on the subject from 6000 to 8000 words following the Almagest guidelines. (http://www.hpdst.gr/publications/almagest/guidelines-for-authors)
Deadline for the submission of the papers 15th December 2015.

d) Elections for the Commission on Science and Literature Council Board.
Members of the Commission willing to serve in the Council Board may submit their nominations until October 30th. Elections will take place electronically until 15th November and the results will be announced officially during the workshop about Jules Verne and 19th century science in Athens in 19th November.
Nominations are welcome for the following positions:
President
Secretary
Treasurer
Webmaster
Regional officers for Asia, Australia, North America, South America, Africa and Europe
Young scholar – Ph.D. candidate
Member of the Council

We accept nominations for the Council Board submitted by two members of the Commission, including self-nominations. A short CV (200 words max.) and a photo if possible have to be submitted as well in order to inform the members of the Society for the academic activities of the candidates. Nominations may be submitted to Prof. John R. Holmes J.Holmes.1@bham.ac.uk
Elections will take place through emails to a Committee of three members who are not canditates for the Council Board.

e) The site of the Commission will be gradually transferred to coscilit.eap.gr as the Hellenic Open University kindly agreed to host it in its server.
f) New publications
New book about science and literature published in Catalan by Xavier Duran:
"La ciència en la literatura. Un viatge per la història de la ciència vista per escriptors de tots els temps"
Universitat de Barcelona Publicacions i Edicions
Collecció Catàlisi
363 pàges.
ISBN 978-84-475-4233-8
Cristina Beatriz Fernández. JOSÉ INGENIEROS Y LOS SABERES MODERNOS. Córdoba, Alción, 2012 y JOSÉ INGENIEROS Y LAS ESCRITURAS DE LA VIDA. DEL CASO CLINICO A LA BIOGRAFIA EJEMPLAR. Mar del Plata, Eudem, 2014.

g) Forthcoming events

BSLS Winter Symposium
Museum of English Rural Life and University of Reading's Special Collections, Saturday 14th November 2015
Archival research has long been a mainstay of literature and science as a discipline, challenging the boundaries of what can be read as text and excavating long-submerged concepts and connections. The recent growth in collaborative doctoral awards and collections-based PhDs, alongside research strands such as the AHRC's Science in Culture, however, demonstrate a need to consider more fully the implications of this kind of investigation. The BSLS's Winter Symposium therefore provides an opportunity for literature and science researchers, at all points in their career, to reflect and build upon the successes and challenges of finding 'Science in the Archives'.

The majority of us use special collections and archival materials in the course of our literature and science research, but we are not always encouraged to reflect upon the ramifications of doing so. This symposium will provide an important opportunity to stimulate and facilitate much needed discussion of the challenges as well as successes of finding science in the archives.For this event, we have adopted a different format from the standard academic twenty-minute conference paper, and will ask speakers to present in a more informal tone and for different lengths of time depending on the session. These shorter, less formal presentations will minimise preparation time for speakers as well as increasing discussion time for all participants. The organisers warmly seek a limited number of 10 minute position papers about methodologies and approaches to literature and science in the archives, from a range of time periods and from speakers at all stages of research or career.





h) For any further information and application for membership please send an email to gvlahakis@yahoo.com and konstantinos.tampakis@gmail.com

CFP - Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities

As part of the Wellcome Trust funded project 'Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities', the BMJ Group journal Medical Humanities will be publishing a special issue guest edited by Dr Gavin Miller, University of Glasgow. We invite papers of broad interest to an international readership of medical humanities scholars and practising clinicians on the topic ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.

Science fiction is a fertile ground for the imagining of biomedical advances. Technologies such as cloning, prosthetics, and rejuvenation are frequently encountered in science-fiction stories. Science fiction also offers alternative ideals of health and wellbeing, and imagines new forms of disease and suffering. The special issue seeks papers that explore issues of health, illness, and medicine in science-fiction narratives within a variety of media (written word, graphic novel, theatre, dance, film and television, etc.).

We are also particularly interested in articles that explore the biomedical ‘technoscientific imaginary’: the culturally-embedded imagining of futures enabled by technoscientific innovation. We especially welcome papers that explore science-fiction tropes, motifs, and narratives within medical and health-related discourses, practices, and institutions. The question – how does the biomedical technoscientific imaginary permeate the everyday and expert worlds of modern medicine and healthcare? – may be a useful prompt for potential authors.

For further details on call and project: http://scifimedhums.glasgow.ac.uk/journal-issue/
Twitter: @scifimedhums
Email: arts-scifimedhums@glasgow.ac.uk

Novel Thoughts: what Cambridge scientists read

Details of a new initiative exploring the reading habits of Cambridge scientists can be found here.

MAP - Poems After William Smith’s Geological Map of 1815

Two hundred years after the publication of the first geological map of an entire country, this  anthology, edited by Michael McKimm, collects new work by over thirty poets inspired by William Smith.

INCLUDES NEW POEMS BY:

Stephen Boyce ● Alison Brackenbury ● James Brookes ● Andy Brown ● Alan Buckley ● Peter Carpenter ● John Wedgwood Clarke ● Jane Commane ● Elizabeth Cook ● Barbara Cumbers ● Jonathan Davidson ● Isobel Dixon ● Maura Dooley ● Sally Flint ●  John Freeman ● Isabel Galleymore ● John Greening ● Philip Gross ● Alyson Hallett ● Ailsa Holland ● John McAuliffe ● Matt Merritt ● Helen Mort ● Andrew Motion ● David M. Orchard ● Mario Petrucci ● Kate Potts ● Peter Robinson ●  Penelope Shuttle ● George Ttoouli ● Anthony Wilson

To purchase a copy, see here.

A review by John Henry is on the History of Geology Group blog here.

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium

Digitised by the Houghton Library at Harvard here.

CFP - Scienific Utopias in the Soviet Union

Call for papers

Scientific Utopias in Soviet Union

Fiction, science and power

(1917-1991)

International Conference

Paris

23-24 SEPTEMBER 2016

Organization: Grégory Dufaud, Ioulia Podoroga, Larissa Zakharova

Scientific committee: Anna Åberg (FMSH/CERCEC), Korine Amacher (Geneva University), Catherine Depretto (Univeristy Paris-IV), Leonid Heller (Lausanne University), Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia), Nikolai Krementsov (University of Toronto), Valéry Pozner (CNRS), Egle Rindzeviciute (SciencesPo-Paris), Alexandr Dmitriev (Higher School of Economics - Moscow)

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, history of science has made significant progress. One topic however was disregarded: scientific utopia, fascinating and intriguing, because situated on the border between literature and science. Nikolai Krementsov is one of the few historians to deal with this topic. In Revolutionary Experiments, on the basis of several literary works, he focuses on medicine in the 1920s, further extending the reflections exposed in his book on Aleksandr Bogdanov. Unsuccessful rival of Lenin, Bogdanov abandoned political life to devote himself to writing. Through science fiction, he did not only expose his vision of socialism, but also theorized the role of medicine and blood transfusion in the transformation of the social world. As suggested by the example of Bogdanov, scientific utopia, as social utopia, offers an imaginary model for a new type of society and wishes to facilitate its realization.

This conference aims to understand how fiction, thanks to its heuristic function, managed to participate in the transformation of scientific activity and reconfigure science and power relation. First of all, we will focus on the relation between fiction and science, in order to explore how literature and film have taken over and readapted some of the concepts based on scientific discoveries and, conversely, how science used the imagery proposed by fiction to sustain its discourse, challenge its findings or launch the brand new experiments. This double movement is clearly mediated by power. This is why we will be attentive to the social command and the mechanisms of censorship at work.  

Through this relation between fiction, science and power we also wish to explore the idea of progress and its meaning during this period. If Soviet authorities made of science mother of progress, the belief in the impending communism started fading in the sixties. To what extent have scientific utopias reflected this evolution? What kind of imagery did they offer to the public? Utopias are rooted in the reality of their time and reveal its concerns. Then, what are the concerns they convey? Have they developed a discourse on risk that scientists would then reappropriate? For what reasons?

This conference addresses all the disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (history, sociology, philosophy, literature studies, etc.). Every field of Soviet science, the best known as well as the most marginal, are to be examined. All works of fiction can be analyzed, as long as they fall within literature or cinema. Our focus is not one genre in particular (utopia, fantastic or science fiction), but a body of works of different status, whose common feature is the use and the reappropriation of scientific discoveries in order to imagine the future.

We invite contributions dealing with following questions:

1.                Scientific concepts and discoveries in fiction

–       variety of imagery proposed by scientific utopias;

–       discoveries and innovations at the heart of this imagery;

–       meanings given to the idea of progress;

–       fears and concerns expressed by scientific utopias.

2. Scientific utopias and science:

–       the role of fiction in scientific thinking and controversies;

–       the role of fiction in the reconfiguration of relations between scientific disciplines;

–       scientific ethics with regard to scientific utopias;

–       the use of scientific utopias in order to obtain recognition of a project by authorities or a scientific institution.

2.      Scientific utopias tested by the society:

–       spreading of scientific utopias and its audience;

–       scientific utopias and popularization of knowledge and techniques;

–       scientific utopias and power, the role of censorship. 

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this conference, please send a 300 word-long abstract and a short bio to the following e-mail addresse: sovietscienceandfiction@gmail.com by November 30th, 2015

The working languages of the conference are French, English and Russian.

Discussion - 'The Hard Problem'

Tom Stoppard and David Sloan Wilson in conversation on the Guardian website here.

A dramatic experiment: science on stage

6:30 pm - 8:00 pm on Monday 11 May 2015

at The Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

A Royal Shakespeare Company event, in partnership with the Royal Society


Why does the story of a scientist, or topic of science itself, make for a
compelling theatrical production?

Join us for an evening uncovering science-inspired theatre.

Our panel will discuss why science stories continue to attract and intrigue
writers and directors, and the claim that such plays oversimplify
scientific theory in the pursuit of an accessible and dramatic narrative.

Hear from Tom Morton-Smith, writer of the critically acclaimed RSC
production Oppenheimer, Professor John D. Barrow FRS, a cosmologist and
playwright, Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, a scholar of science in the theatre,
and Professor Marcus du Sautoy OBE, broadcaster, writer and science
communicator

Chaired by Erica Whyman OBE, Deputy Artistic Director at the Royal
Shakespeare Company.

Tickets for this event can be purchased from the Royal Shakespeare Company

A limited number of tickets may also be available for purchase on the door

Doors open at 6pm

Details here.

UPDATE (20/5/15): Read an article by Kirsten about these issues here; and apparently video from the event is also available here.